‘No, I don’t think so, but please keep me informed about the comparisons.’
‘Of course.’
Richter gave Kemp the section contact telephone number, and they filed silently out of the room.
Richter surrendered his visitor’s pass, retrieved the identity card and got back into the Granada. At the Guardroom, he handed in his car pass and drove out of the main gate, turning the big saloon left – to the north and away from London to avoid the roadworks on the A1. He glanced at the dashboard clock and was surprised to find that it was already after one. He hadn’t realized that he’d been in the building for so long, and began thinking about lunch.
The two things that saved him were the left turn out of RAF Brampton’s main gate, and the bumpy road surface.
When he heard the bang and the jagged lines speared across the windscreen, Richter reacted instinctively and braked hard. When he glanced in the wing mirror, and then the interior mirror, he changed his mind. Richter floored the accelerator pedal, the auto box dropped two gears and the Granada took off like a scalded cat.
What was bothering him was not the fact that the only other car on the road was only about twenty yards behind the Granada – it was the fact that he couldn’t see it in the interior mirror because the rear screen had shattered, and slightly off-centre to the left-hand side of the car Richter could see the hole where the bullet had come in.
That definitely bothered him.
Chapter Nine
Tuesday
Anton Kirov
Captain Valeri Bondarev stood on the starboard bridge wing, his sparse grey hair being blown awry by the sea breeze, and looked moodily down at the foredeck. With the ship at cruising stations, a group of the new crew had assembled and, with obvious military precision, was performing energetic callisthenics under the direction of a stocky Ukrainian. He detected movement to his left and turned. The leader of the new crew walked across the bridge wing and leaned on the rail beside him. Bondarev realized he still didn’t know the man’s name. ‘What do I call you?’ he growled.
‘My name is Zavorin, Petr Zavorin. You may call me Petr.’
‘I prefer to use your military rank,’ Bondarev said stiffly.
Zavorin looked briefly at the captain, then glanced forward again. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘I am a colonel in a tank regiment – that is all you need to know.’
Bondarev smiled slightly, unbelieving. ‘And those men,’ he said, gesturing forwards, ‘I suppose they’re all tank drivers and gunners, are they? Learned all about ships from reading books, I suppose. You’re all Spetsnaz, aren’t you?’
Zavorin looked appraisingly at Bondarev. The captain’s perception had surprised him – perhaps a more open approach would pay dividends. ‘Yes,’ Zavorin said, nodding, ‘your powers of observation do you credit, Captain. We are part of a Spetsnaz company.’
The Russian Spetsnaz are the most numerous special forces in the world, comprising some twenty-five thousand troops in all. Most are deployed with the regular Russian armed forces, but a significant number operate permanently or temporarily under deep cover in the West, as athletes, delegates or embassy staff. In the event of hostilities, deep-cover Spetsnaz personnel would be ordered to assassinate political and military leaders, disrupt lines of communications by sabotage, seize airfields and undertake other operations to make invasion by Russian regular forces easier. The competence and ability of Spetsnaz forces has already been demonstrated. In 1968 they seized Prague Airport immediately before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Spetsnaz troops were infiltrated into Kabul in December 1979 to soften up local resistance before Soviet forces entered Afghanistan.
Zavorin glanced round the bridge wing, then looked back at Bondarev. ‘I have my orders, Captain, as you have, but perhaps we can work better together if I am frank with you. Not here, though. We will go to your cabin.’
Bondarev nodded, and led the way off the bridge. As soon as Bondarev and Zavorin had left, two of the Spetsnaz troops stopped their exercise routine and ran aft. The first trooper picked up a cardboard package about a metre square and twenty centimetres thick, and carried it easily up the external ladders to the bridge. The second man followed with a small toolbox.
With the proficiency born of long practice, the two men climbed on to the bridge roof and began the assembly and installation of a gimballed satellite dish. When the dish was sitting on its mount, one of the troopers began the preliminary alignment process. The final alignment, and initializing communication with the satellite, would have to be delayed until the ship was stationary in harbour.
With the alignment completed, the trooper called to two other men who had climbed up to the bridge. The three of them manhandled four large plywood screens, painted to match the superstructure of the Anton Kirov, on to the bridge roof, and then erected them along the edges. The screens completely hid the satellite dish from view, except from directly above.
The second trooper attached a coaxial cable to the LNB on the dish and ran it down the side of the bridge, concealing it in an existing cable conduit. At deck level, he again made every effort to hide the cable, and finally passed the end through a small hole he had drilled earlier. The hole led directly into the forward hold of the Anton Kirov.
American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London
Roger Abrahams swung open the heavy door and John Westwood followed him into the secure briefing room. The long table had seats for ten, but there were only two mugs by the coffee pot at the head of the table. The two men sat down facing each other, and Abrahams poured coffee.
‘Thanks,’ said Westwood as Abrahams passed the mug over. Westwood unlocked his briefcase, opened the lid and pulled out a large sealed envelope. Taking a clasp knife from his pocket, he sliced through the closed flap at one end and pulled out a slightly smaller envelope. In contrast to the plain brown of the outer envelope, this one was prominently stamped in red ink ‘Cosmic Top Secret. NOFORN. By hand of officer only’.
Abrahams raised his eyebrows and nodded towards the envelope. ‘NOFORN’ was the CIA acronym derived from ‘NO FOReign Nationals’ which prohibited non-US citizens from seeing a document. ‘CTS? NOFORN? What the hell have you got there, John?’
Westwood grinned somewhat wryly as he used the knife on the second envelope. ‘We’re not really sure,’ he replied, pulling out the file. The cover bore the title ‘Ravensong’. He positioned the file on the table in front of him, opened it and glanced at the minute sheet on the left-hand side. Then he took a sip of coffee and looked over at Abrahams.
‘None of this makes much sense yet, Roger, so you’ll have to bear with me while I run through the sequence of events. I’m not even sure if you’ll be able to help, but I hope so. We really do need something concrete to work on.’
Abrahams nodded. Westwood glanced down at the file and began his briefing.
Cambridgeshire
The Granada’s sudden burst of acceleration had taken the chase car driver by surprise, and the gap between the vehicles had opened from twenty to about a hundred yards. The pursuing car was a Jaguar XJ saloon, the version with the 4.2-litre six-cylinder engine. It was a good car for a chase, and Richter knew there was no way the old Granada could out-run it. Not for the first time, he cursed Simpson’s insistence on only using cars at least five years old. That was one of his worries. The other was the rest of the opposition.
If he had been setting up a hit, particularly a mobile hit, Richter would have made sure that he had a back-up vehicle somewhere ahead, just in case the first attempt failed. Richter had no reason to suspect that whoever had organized his attempted demise would be any less conscientious than him, so he knew he had to start going the other way, and quickly.
The dual carriageway was rapidly coming to an end, which provided him with the opportunity he needed. Richter hit the brakes, hard, and watched the speedometer needle unwind as the car’s speed dropped. When he had fifty-five showing, he span the wheel hard right, released the brakes
, pulled on the handbrake, waited until the car was sliding sideways, then released the handbrake and floored the accelerator. The tyres screamed as the power broke their grip on the road surface and the Ford fishtailed up the opposite carriageway.
As he got it more or less straight, Richter ducked down as low as he could, because the Jaguar was right beside him, going the other way under heavy braking, and he’d seen the man in the back seat, with the dark mouth of a gun pointing straight at him. He heard three shots above the roar of the engine, and the driver’s door window fell in a million pieces all over him. One thing was clear – there was no way Simpson was ever going to be able to offer that Granada as a clean one-owner model. Richter straightened up in the seat and checked the door mirror.
He had better than a quarter of a mile on them, and the Jaguar was only just making the turn to follow, so Richter had perhaps half a mile to play with. The XJ6 was still visible in the mirror when Richter took the first left-hand junction, so he knew they’d follow. He started to breathe a little more easily, and started thinking straight.
He had no idea who was behind the attempt to deprive him of his meagre pension, but he was quite determined to find out. He scanned the road ahead, looking for a bend and some kind of cover where he could get the car out of sight. Richter also needed a dearth of witnesses, and luckily there seemed to be almost no other traffic.
Two miles further on, with the Jaguar out of sight behind him, Richter found it. A left-hand curve, followed by a right, with a farm track leading off to the left, past a dilapidated barn. He hit the brakes hard, hoping that the driver of the Jaguar wouldn’t notice the skid marks on the road, slammed the box into reverse, and backed the Granada off the road.
He only just made it. Less than three seconds after the Ford had rocked to a halt by the barn, the XJ6 roared past the end of the track. Richter hauled the auto shift into drive and floored the throttle. He forced the car, bucking and kicking, back on to the road. Now he was where he wanted to be – behind them.
Richter was doing fifty as he hit the right-hand curve, and saw the Jaguar a quarter of a mile ahead when he entered the straight, with the speedometer needle hovering around the seventy mark. The Jaguar vanished from sight around a bend, and Richter gave the Granada its head. He couldn’t rely on them not seeing the Ford until the last moment, though he hoped they would be concentrating on the road in front, so he had to make up ground when they were out of sight.
The XJ6 was less than two hundred yards in front as Richter came out of the bend, then he lost it almost immediately as the road swung left again. He passed a road sign which brought a slight smile to his lips, announcing bends for two and a half miles, and pushed the Granada as much as he dared.
Then, suddenly, he was right behind them. Richter had practised it often enough, but this was the first time he’d ever had to do it for real. When they saw him, the Granada was less than fifty yards behind them. The Jaguar driver touched his brakes, thought better of it, and put on power again. The shape in the back seat twisted round, gun in hand. Richter watched to see which window he was going for. He moved to the left – he was probably right-handed – so Richter floored the accelerator and swung right.
As the nose of the Granada passed the rear of the Jaguar, Richter swung the car left, still under full power. The XJ6 lurched sideways as the Ford’s nearside front wing hit it, and whatever the driver did then, Richter had them.
Anton Kirov
In his sea cabin on the deck below the bridge and next to the radio room, Valeri Bondarev produced two shot glasses and a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka, and gestured Zavorin to a chair. He poured two measures of vodka and passed one to Zavorin; both men drank, knocking the liquid to the back of their throats. Bondarev poured two more glasses and waited.
‘Thank you, Captain,’ Zavorin said, picking up his glass. ‘Now, let me explain what we will be doing. As you guessed, your new crewmembers are Spetsnaz soldiers. They have cross-trained with the Black Sea Fleet and are all very experienced sailors, which is why they have been selected for this mission.’
‘And the mission is?’ Bondarev asked.
‘All in good time, Captain,’ Zavorin replied, taking a sip from his glass. ‘Now, your original route was what?’
‘One moment.’ Bondarev stood up, left his cabin and climbed the stairs to the chart-house at the rear of the bridge, selected a route-planning chart of the Mediterranean and returned with it to his cabin. He moved the bottle of vodka and the glasses to one side and spread the chart across his desk.
‘We sailed from Odessa, here,’ he said, pointing, ‘and we were programmed to route through the Black Sea to Istanbul, then cross the Aegean to Piraeus, and route west through the Mediterranean to Tangier and then south to Casablanca. We have cargo in the holds for Piraeus, Durrës and Tunis, and we have scheduled cargo collections at Tunis, Marseille and Tangier for delivery to Rabat and Casablanca. The return voyage is much the same, with cargo to be collected in the western Mediterranean for delivery to Sicily, Greece and Crete.’
Zavorin nodded and studied the chart for a few minutes. ‘Well, Captain,’ he said at last, ‘there will have to be some changes.’
Bondarev grunted. ‘I expected that.’
‘The first change,’ Zavorin went on, ‘will be an additional stop to collect cargo – actually special equipment for my men – before we reach Istanbul.’
‘Which port?’ Bondarev asked.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Zavorin replied. ‘This mission was undertaken at short notice, and the equipment will take time to assemble. My guess is Constanta, but it could be Varna or Burgas.’ He tapped the names of the three ports, on the Black Sea’s west coast, with a pencil.
‘No problem,’ Bondarev said. ‘And after Istanbul and the Bosphorus?’
Zavorin looked thoughtful, and used a pair of dividers to measure distances on the chart. ‘I want to keep to the ship’s programmed route as much as possible, to avoid attracting attention. Piraeus should not be a problem, but we will not be able to make Durrës or Marseille if we are to keep on schedule. Yes,’ he said. ‘Have your navigator prepare a new course from Istanbul to Piraeus, then Tunis and Tangier, and signal the authorities in Durrës and Marseille that the Anton Kirov will not be calling at those ports on this voyage.’
Bondarev was in no doubt that this was an order. ‘And after Tangier?’ he asked, jotting a note on a pad.
Zavorin smiled. ‘I don’t think we will make Tangier,’ he said. ‘The ship will develop engine trouble and will be forced to put in to Gibraltar.’
Bondarev bristled slightly. ‘My ship has never had engine trouble.’
Zavorin nodded. ‘I know. That is one reason why this vessel was selected. But on this voyage, it will develop engine trouble and we will put in to port to get it rectified.’
‘Why Gibraltar?’ Bondarev asked.
Zavorin shook his head. ‘You do not need to know that, Captain. Let me just say that we will be collecting another item of cargo there – an item of crucial importance to Russia.’
There was a knock on the door. Bondarev slid it open and took the signal from the radioman – one of Zavorin’s men – who stood there. He read it and then passed it to Zavorin. ‘Good,’ Zavorin murmured. ‘The equipment will be ready for us at Varna in four hours.’
Bondarev bent over the chart. ‘We are now about six hours out of Varna,’ he said.
‘Excellent, Captain,’ Zavorin replied. ‘I will go and brief my men.’
American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London
John Westwood leaned back in his chair, poured himself another cup of coffee and rubbed his tired eyes. The jet lag was starting to catch up with him, he thought, stifling a yawn. Abrahams sat silently, digesting what he had been told. ‘You see the problem?’ Westwood asked.
Abrahams nodded. ‘Yeah. One, your top-level source in Moscow tells you that a covert assault by the CIS on the West is in progress. Two, you can’t find any trace of preparation
s for any kind of assault, anywhere. Three, an attack by the CIS makes no sense in the current political climate. Four, the Russians might have developed a kind of super neutron bomb. Five, if they have, and they deploy it, the weapon will actually favour the Western alliance in any future conflict.’ He looked across at his former chief. ‘Is that about it?’
‘Pretty much,’ Westwood nodded.
‘That’s complete nonsense, so we must be missing something. Somewhere there’s a key that will lock that lot, and tie everything together. Right. I understand the background, but what exactly do you want me – or rather CIA London Station – to do about it?’
Westwood looked across the table. ‘Nothing much. We’ve talked the tail off this, and we’ve got exactly nowhere. What we really need is more data, more information about whatever the hell is going on in the Kremlin or the SVR or GRU or wherever. In short, we need a lead. Do you,’ he asked, ‘have any contacts with the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6 or whatever they’re calling themselves these days?’
Abrahams nodded. ‘Of course we have. That’s one reason why we’re here.’
Westwood shook his head. ‘Sorry, I’m not explaining myself. I know about the official contacts and information exchange. What I meant was unofficial contacts. Someone who is sufficiently well placed to find out if SIS has any agents-in-place in Russia who could find out what the hell is going on.’ As Roger Abrahams looked at him quizzically, Westwood continued. ‘Look, at the moment I don’t want this on an official level. It could all be some disinformation scheme by the SVR to get us chasing our tails, running round all the Western intelligence agencies, and generally looking like klutzes. That’s what I hope. Or it could be real, and RAVEN could be genuine, in which case we have to try to protect him as well as stop this assault. In either case, the last thing we want to do is to start officially involving allied intelligence services. They’re still leaky, and if the threat is real and word gets back to the Kremlin that we’re on to it, this could turn from a covert assault to an overt one real fast.’
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